If there’s a family that embodies all that the anti-God, do-as-you-please (as long as they agree with it), so-called liberals (Brent Bozell calls them “libertines”, but that word doesn’t really describe the freakier-than-thou attitude they exhibit), it’s the Duggars.  Here’s a family that really does do as they please, and violates just about every single American cultural norm.  They are as off-the-trail as any family since the fictional Addams family hit the airwaves.

Reality TV has few series that make it past the Great Barrier of the third year (3 or 4 seasons, depending on who’s counting).  Within the subgenre of family-life shows, 19 Kids and Counting is without peer.  Over 6 years and 9 seasons, the show has been one of the biggest hits for TLC, drawing a record 4.4 million viewers for the climactic wedding between Jill Duggar and Derick Dillard.  So why all the hate?

Like the popular Duck Dynasty Robertson family (Sadie Robertson: It’s an ‘honor’ to be compared to the Duggar family), the Duggars stand for something unacceptable to the progressive left:  undiluted devotion to God coupled with the ability to resist, and in fact push back against, the left’s biggest cultural weapons.  They just don’t care if the world watches their TV show, and they just don’t care who hates them.  I think that’s the most froth-producing, maddening thing of all to the left:  that their collective venom, indignity, and accusations would just be ignored as if they don’t matter at all.  The left cannot imagine a world where they and their beliefs don’t matter, and they fail to comprehend that the Duggars are not putting on an act—the irresistible force of their cultural change cannot be endured in their universe, where everyone must submit.

So far, 150,000 people have signed a change.org petition, asking TLC to:

End LGBTQ fear mongering by the Duggars. The Duggars have been using their fame to promote discrimination, hate, and fear-mongering against gays and transgendered people. You need to take a stand on the side of justice and cancel their show.

All this was over a single robocall that Michelle Duggar recorded opposing a proposed local ordinance in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  ICYMI, the left considers Fayetteville, indeed the whole state of Arkansas, if they can find it on a map, part of the vast stretch of America between New York and Los Angeles known as “flyover country”.  What happens in Fayetteville affects the average socialist in Berkeley about as much as Thomas Steyer sneezing affects Hobby Lobby sales.

“The Fayetteville City Council is voting on an ordinance this Tuesday night that would allow men – yes I said men – to use womens and girls restrooms, locker rooms, showers, sleeping areas and other areas that are designated for females only. I don’t believe the citizens of Fayetteville would want males with past child predator convictions that claim they are female to have a legal right to enter private areas that are reserved for women and girls. “

The Duggars, particularly Jim Bob Duggar, have always had a political side.  Jim Bob won a seat in the Arkansas legislature and served from 1999-2002.  He ran for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2002, but lost, and ran for the Arkansas Senate in 2006, again losing.  John-David Duggar has run for Tontitown alderman twice, losing both times (alderman is like a city councilman, John-David’s most recent loss was by only 12 votes, a mere 1%).  Oldest son Josh Duggar is Executive Director of FRC Action, the political action committee of the Family Research Council, enemy of everything the progressive left embraces.

Nothing frosts the left’s buttocks like a politically active, conservative celebrity.  They mercilessly swarm, mock, and discredit anyone who would dare speak out publicly.  The Duggars are no exception, and have been the focus of withering criticism for years.  A blog called Duggars Without Pity carefully dissects each episode of 19 Kids.  While some supporters and fans post on the site, the vast majority are haters, or at least cheering for the Duggars to be exposed as fakes, frauds, or cult members.  While Brent Bozell wrote of Washington Post critic Hank Stuever’s hatred,

Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever recently raged on the Internet against the Duggar family of TLC’s “19 Kids & Counting” and how they are no more worthy of attention than the Kardashians. Their children are denied “freedom of choice.”

“My thoughts on the Duggars are few and far between because I think the show treats its viewers like they’re learning-disabled,” he wrote. Then he doubled down. “The viewers, not the Duggars. Although … “

Some of the garden-variety haters try to equate the Duggars and the Kardashians more directly.

I’m tired of the Duggar Defender line of “at least they aren’t the Kardashian’s”. I would like to have a discussion without it being deflected to another family that doesn’t really have anything to do with TLC’s Duggars.

Kardashian’s – large family, started off as small potatoes. All the girls had jobs.
Duggar’s – large family, started off as small potatoes. The family worked for a living.

Kardashian’s – sex tape started an empire.
Duggar’s – Michelle’s sex life started an empire.

Kardashian’s – promiscuous behavior.
Duggar’s – promiscuous behavior inside of marriage.

Kardashian’s – expect freebies.
Duggar’s – expect freebies

Kardashian’s – Chloe rushed into a marriage. Marriage fell apart and her family is there for her.
Duggar’s – Jill rushed into a marriage and family is there for her. We will never know if the marriage has problems.

Kardashian’s – scripted.
Duggar’s – scripted.

Kardashian’s – episodes where they go on vacations.
Duggar’s – episodes where they go on vacations.

Kardashian’s – have become more fashionable and over the top.
Duggar’s – have become more fashionable and over the top.

Hmmm.

This was posted by someone calling themselves “Wednesday”.  Wednesday appears to be a bit learning disabled, but she may be right on one point:  reality shows tend to cover the same ground.  But equating a sex tape with a prodigious mother is a stretch.  Wednesday uses the word “promiscuous”; I don’t think she knows what it means (hint:  it means “having or characterized by many transient sexual relationships”).  Saying someone is “promiscuous inside of marriage” is nonsense.

“Jill rushed into a marriage…we will never know if the marriage has problems” is equally head-scratching.  These bloggers obsess over the Duggars, reporting sightings, stalkings, spoilers, and purported—mostly invented—dirt with a fervor usually reserved for British Royalty.  If any of the newly married Duggar daughters have the slightest tiff in their marriage, I’m sure it will be reported there first, followed by a flurry of tabloids.

With all the energy devoted to Discovery Communications (TLC’s parent) demise, the network is sure to listen, right?  Take a look at what happened to A&E Networks when they caved to liberal pressure.  Phil Robertson, patriarch of the Duck Dynasty family, was banned from the show after GLAAD and other LGBT organizations expressed their horror that this evangelical Christian man would actually quote Scripture when asked a leading question about homosexuality.  Let’s see how that worked out.  Phil was dropped from the show on December 18, 2013, and welcomed back on December 27th.  A whole 9 days later.  Not even two weeks.  Phil missed a grand total of zero episodes.  Did Phil backtrack on his statement, or retract his views?  Did Phil apologize or recant his use of Scripture?  Nope, nope, and nope.

All that the LGBT crowd got for its losing effort was a bland statement by the Robertson family, regretting Phil’s “coarse language” (he used the words “vagina” and “anus”).  Discovery executives look at that debacle and say to themselves:  hmmm, let’s cancel the show, I’m sure it will cause more viewers to tune in to our other shows.  Nope.

Sorry GLAAD and fellow travelers, I’m afraid I have to predict that 19 Kids will survive this wave of haters, the same way that Phil Robertson’s place in Duck Dynasty survived.  All Phil did was answer a question, and tell the reporter what the Bible says.

Scripture says it’s sin, and Phil called it sin.  The rest is personal preference.  That’s the heart of the matter:  to the left, anything can be personal preference, from naked wilderness camping, to polygamy (and also can be the subject of a reality show), except adherence to Biblical values.  Liberals allow only two possibilities for people in that category:  they are either liars and frauds, or bigots.

The fact that Phil Robertson, and Jim Bob Duggar, are neither frauds nor bigots is deeply disturbing to the left.  It’s so disturbing that they cannot allow it to be true, lest their grand illusion of evangelical Christianity as a hateful, hypocritical, uneducated backwater be shattered.  In their narrative, the Duggars have to be fake, there has to be something wrong with them.  The left vainly hopes the Duggars will be exposed as child abusers, or at least find a tape of Michelle Duggar cussing at Jeremiah (can you even imagine the word “vagina” coming out of Michelle Duggar’s mouth?  I honestly can’t).

They won’t find it.

They won’t find it because I’m fairly sure it doesn’t exist.  I’m not elevating the Duggars to some pedestal of parental perfection or apostlehood.  They are people like all of us.  But they are people who place a higher purpose on their lives than just a TV show.  The left can’t fathom that either.  In a world filled with Snookis and Kardashians, they expect TV to go to the Duggars’ heads, like it did with the Gosslins.

You remember Kate Gosselin?  She was part of the show Jon & Kate Plus Eight, chronicling the Gosselins’ lives following the birth of sextuplets and then twins.  Kate is a professed Christian, a one-time member of the Assemblies of God (disclosure: I am AG too).  Kate and Jon’s marriage fell apart, and the left crowed in victory as Kate struggled to maintain her income through the show.  They celebrated her descent into celebrity hell, with every tabloid story alleging uncouth behavior, cheating, and the pain of divorce.  Another Christian celebrity bites the dust.

The Duggars aren’t like the Gosselins.  They have their own money.  They had their kids one (or two) at a time, over twenty years, not all at once.  They are secure in their business, their faith and their beliefs.  The Duggar girls are not being restrained in a basement, secluded from the world.  They are secluded in one way: the Duggars don’t watch TV, but neither does a growing slice of America under the age of 25, other than sports and Netflix.  About 12 years ago, I went almost two years without watching any TV, and I can say it was a rather freeing experience.  The Duggars don’t even watch their own show, other than the occasional flashback.

Duggar children are well adjusted, loving, well-educated, and confident.  That’s what any parent would want.  But the left can’t stomach that children, especially teenagers, can live happy lives without sex, drugs, and rock & roll.  They say that keeping the family free from those influences is somehow denying the children some kind of basic human right to sin.

Those same people go apoplectic when a uniformed military member or recruiter walks onto their kid’s campus, or a group preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ stands on the corner speaking to their kids, or members of a pro-life organization hand out brochures in front of an abortion clinic describing alternatives to killing your baby.  You see, it’s not a basic human right to hear about military service, Jesus Christ, or adoption.  That kind of influence should be denied access to children (yours and mine).

19 Kids and Counting’s success, and the liberal world’s hatred for the Duggars is proof that there’s still hope for America.  Hope because the haters have to resort to a lame petition on change.org to make their point.  They are losing.  Losing the war for the hearts and souls of America.  Losing the war on the unborn.  Losing the war on values.  Their only weapons are trying to trap Christians in the klieg lights of TV stardom and then tear them down.  But the Duggars are immune to their weapons, having found a greater weapon: their faith.

The indigestible bit that the left can’t swallow is contained in this simple thought, the last words of a martyr in India written as lyrics by Sadhu Sundar Singh.

Though none go with me, still I will follow;
Though none go with me, still I will follow;
Though none go with me, still I will follow;
No turning back, no turning back.

To the Duggars:  keep following Jesus, keep the faith, reach and lead many to Him, including the 150,000 and growing list of those who wish to see your influence wain.

The world behind me, the cross before me;
The world behind me, the cross before me;
The world behind me, the cross before me;
No turning back, no turning back.

(crosspost)